Dreams of Space

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow"

Robert Goddard, 1927.

"The younger generation of rocket engineers is just
beginning. They are of the new generation to which space travel is not
going to be a dream of the future but an everyday job with everyday
worries in which they will be engaged"

Willy Ley,
1951.

"The staircase leading to space is built of books"

John Glenn,
1963.

"The visions we offer our children shape the future. It
matters what those visions are. Often they become
self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps"

Carl Sagan,
1994.

"Soon there will be no one who remembers when spaceflight was
still a dream, the reverie of reclusive boys and the vision of a handful
of men"

With the discoveries by Robert Goddard and Hermann Oberth of liquid-fueled
rockets in the 1930's and the use of V-2 rockets in the 1940's, rocket
travel went from science fiction to science fact in the public's mind. In
post-World War II America anything seemed possible, even going to the
Moon! There appeared
in 1949, a book The Conquest of
Space
, which led to
a new trend in children's books. These books outlined the future the
children of the "baby boom" would grow up in, the world of space
(example). The
illustrations in these books show facts (as they were known) mixed in with
the fantasy of space flight and led many of the readers of these books
to "dream of space".

Before the 1950's there were dreams but much more scattered and
certainly
only thought by a few people as anything but science fiction. Here are a
few selections from these earlier adult and childrens' book
illustrations.